| The drafting of a public accord entitled "Elections
2003", which was initiated yesterday by the Central Electoral Commission
(CEC) and involved the leaders of the major political parties, ran the
risk of resulting in a scandal. The accord, which is supposed to help make
elections transparent and fair, is to be signed in August. Yesterday the
leaders of political parties discussed draft documents and nominated their
candidates to the organisational committee.
CEC Chairman Alexander Veshnyakov and Director of the Free Elections
Foundation Andrei Przhezdomsky, who chaired the meeting, did their best
to keep the party leaders from exchanging accusations that threatened
to cause offence, but failed. Party leaders did not try to conceal their
scepticism toward the proposal of the CEC.
According to the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party
has always been the victim of dirty election campaign tactics and does
not expect things to improve this year, no matter what accords participants
in the elections would sign ahead of the election campaign.
The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky stated
once that "now he will spoil the mood to the initiators of such an
action", and said that "werewolves" (Ed. Such a nick-name
was given by the journalists to the recent arrest of high interior minister
officials on corruption charge) are to be found not only in the Interior
Ministry, but also sit in all the electoral commissions. The leader of
the LDPR said he "did not doubt " that even the Central Electoral
commission was established proceeding from an "agreement between
a number of factions." In his view free and fair elections are out
of the question, when postmen open post-cards sent to the LDPR with congratulations
on Victory Day (May 9) and write "foul things" in them.
Sergei Mitrokhin who
was representing the Yabloko Party expressed concern about the latest
election laws proposed by the CEC. He also drew Alexander Veshnyakov's
attention to the fact the police have recently been resolving political
tasks in a broader number of cases. According to Mitrokhin, police quite
often get registered in a number of passport issuing offices and vote
for "the homeless and drug-takers". He also noted that Yabloko
would certainly sign the accord, but its honest implementation by "sheep
and wolves" is impossible. "Rather by wolves and bears,"
said Deputy Speaker of the Duma Artur Chilingarov amending Mitrokhin's
metaphor.
The Union of Right-Wing Forces leader Boris Nemtsov stated that his
party had no illusions regarding the fairness of the forthcoming elections.
He stated that it was necessary to monitor strictly the financing of political
parties. Nemtsov observed that political organisations have been privatised
by financial and industrial groups on a large scale. Nemtsov could not
resist adding some criticism of the United Russia party. He called the
fight against "werewolves" [in the Interior Ministry] a PR action
held by the United Russia and also expressed his resentment that Interior
Minister Boris Gryzlov had been giving out party membership cards and
receiving the party's supporters during work hours.
Head of the General Council of United Russia Valery Bogomolov was quite
abashed by the hail of critical remarks on his party. But he replied amicably
that "one cannot start a good business with bad words", after
which he offered to his opponents to live in peace. The majority of the
political leaders followed his advice to be out of harm's way and withdrew
themselves hastily from the conference hall.
See also:
State Duma Elections
2003
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